CommentaryWhen Max Ernst began working on this painting it had the working title of ›Faubourg Dada‹. In the course of his work, the artist painted over part of his canvas, transforming the Emperor of Wahaua into the focal point of his Dadaist iconography of the real and surreal. The model for the figure of the ruler was a photograph of the Ugandan King Daudi in Emil Ludwig's book ›Reise nach Afrika‹, published in Berlin in 1913. In the background, Max Ernst cites details from a 1919 catalog of a Cologne manufacturer of teaching materials for natural science classes, which the artist used as source of motifs for other works of this period. Illustrative models from the world of animals and plants are thus placed in a new context and re-interpreted, a typical example of the artist's enigmatic, expressive art.

When Max Ernst began working on this painting it had the working title of ›Faubourg Dada‹. In the course of his work, the artist painted over part of his canvas, transforming the Emperor of Wahaua into the focal point of his Dadaist iconography of the real and surreal. The model for the figure of the ruler was a photograph of the Ugandan King Daudi in Emil Ludwig's book ›Reise nach Afrika‹, published in Berlin in 1913. In the background, Max Ernst cites details from a 1919 catalog of a Cologne manufacturer of teaching materials for natural science classes, which the artist used as source of motifs for other works of this period. Illustrative models from the world of animals and plants are thus placed in a new context and re-interpreted, a typical example of the artist's enigmatic, expressive art.